Inter-institutional partnerships in faculty development

A crowdsourced list

Alexandra Mihai
The Educationalist
Published in
6 min readJul 13, 2021

When we talk about faculty development, we often refer to individual practices taken from a specific context (country, discipline, etc). So, for this new episode of the “Around the world” series I prepared an extensive tour … around the world. Only that this time we focus on partnerships- collaborations between universities at a local, regional, national and international level on designing and delivering faculty development programmes (I wrote some more about this topic here). Sounds like something unlikely for the Higher Education landscape? I thought the same, but the academic community in my Personal Learning Network (aka Twitter) proved me wrong. This thread became so rich with wonderful examples that I simply had to turn it into a crowdsourced blog post. And this is most likely a list that will keep growing, as I find out about more cooperation initiatives (so keep them coming!).

So, here we go- lots and lots of inspiration! I tried to group the initiatives geographically (and included an international section at the end), but some of the “national” initiatives also have a cross-border component sometimes- that’s the fun part, right?

Europe

  • https://opencourses.ie: a suite of open professional development courses developed and in many cased delivered in collaboration between Irish institutions;
  • Enhancing Digital Teaching & Learning in Irish Universities: a collaboration between all universities in Ireland to support HE teaching staff in their digital professional development, led by Sharon Flynn;
  • Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning (LDE-CEL): an interuniversity and interdisciplinary research centre as well as an innovation and training platform that aims to discover what makes university learning and teaching work and how it can be innovated and improved. The three universities are the testing ground for continous innovation and improvement of university learning and teaching.
  • Higher Education Learning Lab (HELLA): a research based educational development project on Higher Education pedagogy that is developing and piloting a new multilingual 60 ECTS study module on HE for universities and universities of applied sciences in Finland and Sweden;
  • European Network on Teaching Excellence (E-NOTE): a project funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership framework; it brings together university managers, teaching faculty, support staff, PhD supervisors, students and education experts to advance exchanges and best practices in relation to “teaching excellence”;
  • Eportfolio Ireland: Professional Learning Network for Eportfolio practitioners and researchers and a hub for useful resources as well as upcoming events on the topic of ePortfolios;
  • Bloomsbury Learning Exchange (BLE): a community that brings together six Higher Education Institutions in Bloomsbury, central London. It is a space to share good practice and enable collaboration in digital education and technology enhanced learning projects;
  • HEFi Reading Group: Reading Group organised and hosted by the Educational Development Team at the University of Birmingham’s Higher Education Futures Institute (HEFi) and open to anyone interested in a deeper exploration of various dimensions of HE practice;
  • All-Wales “National Masters in Education”: a partnership between 7 universities in Wales, funded by the Welsh government, providing professional qualification to up to 500 education professionals, starting in September 2021;
  • Cooperation between Universidade do Minho and Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal) to co-create faculty development programmes since 2019;
  • Collaboration between 22 universities and Polytechnic Institutes across Portugal on a national online program of faculty development; over 5000 participants over 8 editions since September 2020.

United States

Canada

  • Maple League: partnership between 4 Canadian universities; the Virtual Maple League Teaching and Learning Centre offers support and resources to teachers and students from all participating universities;
  • Open Pedagogy Learning Community: collaboration between Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) and Keene State College to provide their faculty an opportunity to explore a variety of open educational practices;
  • College Educator Development Program: a collaborative undertaking of the six western region colleges in Canada; its mission is to foster teaching excellence through the shared exploration of evidence-based teaching and engagement in ongoing reflective teaching practice.

Australia & New Zeeland

Africa

  • Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC): an academic consortium comprising the four public universities in the Western Cape (South Africa) running projects that include professional development and capacity building in HE;

International

  • Open Networked Learning: a network of universities in Sweden, Finland and South Africa offering a joint open professional development course for teachers in Higher Education;
  • Online ABC LD: a community developed around the ABC Learning Design workshops; a hub for resources related to the workshops, in 17 languages;
  • OERu: a collection of open courses by various universities around the globe; soon to include professional development courses;
  • AMICAL Consortium: an international consortium of 28 American‐modeled institutions in 20 different countries aimed at advancing learning, teaching and research through the collaborative development of library, technology and curricular resources at member institutions;
  • The Global Conservatoire: a collaboration between The Royal College of Music (London), Manhattan School of Music (MSM), the Royal Danish Academy of Music (RDAM), and the mdw — University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW); it offers a digital learning environment that expands each institutional partner’s course offerings, offering a new and flexible range of courses set against a rich cultural backdrop;
  • United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Open Pedagogy Fellowship: a partnership between 4 Canadian and 4 American universities; this fellowship provides faculty with an opportunity to work with their colleagues and students to impact change through open pedagogy and community engagement;
  • Bay View Alliance: an international network of 10 research universities in US and Canada working to address the challenges of building a culture that supports more effective teaching and enhanced student learning, especially at the department level;
  • UNICollaboration: Cross-Disciplinary Organisation for Telecollaboration and Virtual Exchange in Higher Education aiming to support telecollaborative practitioners and to promote telecollaboration and virtual exchange in higher education.

This post is part of the “Around the world” series on faculty development. Watch this space in the coming months for more inspiration on professional development approaches in Higher Education from around the globe.

Thanks for reading! I am looking forward to reading your thoughts or suggestions in the comments below. For more insights, analysis and tips on Higher Education, online teaching and UX/learning design, follow me on Twitter and/or sign up to my newsletter!

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Written by Alexandra Mihai

Assistant Professor of Innovation in Higher Education @MaastrichtU. Passionate about designing new learning spaces. My newsletter: educationalist.substack.com